Black Magic ▹ The Vampire Diaries [1]

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY
RUNNING AWAY

"If your gods are real and if they are just, why is the world so full of injustice?"

(   trigger warning for severe panic attack. stops when henrik says "what". writing this brought back very vivid memories of my own panic attack from three years ago, so please be careful. skip if you have to ♥ )

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

     When Ethan died, everything around Henrik sounded muffled. He couldn't hear any of the people yelling at him and Klaus, wanting to know what in the world was happening. He couldn't hear Tyler freaking out and coming over to crouch over his brother, trying to shake him awake. He couldn't even hear Klaus saying his name, repeating it over and over in a tone of voice he rarely used anymore. He couldn't hear anything but a roaring sound in his ears. He stared down at Ethan with wide, almost vacant, eyes. He took in the blood smeared around his mouth and eyes, took in his still chest, and promptly scrambled to his feet. His lungs were starting to constrict in a different way, and his hands were shaking. He was sucking in large gulps of air, but no one seemed to notice that he couldn't breathe. Ethan was the focus, so no one was looking at him—no one except Klaus, who was the only person in the room moving slowly. The only one not panicking. Henrik didn't notice that, either.

The only thing on his mind was that he couldn't breathe.

With his entire body trembling now, he made his way toward the door to the science lab. It took him a few tries to actually wrap his hand around the handle, and then he was jerking it open. He didn't make it very far down the hall. Just far enough to find another door and stumble inside. He needed space to breathe. He needed room to move. He needed quiet to—not think, but to process. But it was hard to process when he still couldn't breathe, and there was a tingling sensation spreading up his arms and legs. The kind of tingling that came when blood flow to the limbs was too slow or nonexistent, though Henrik couldn't fathom in that moment why his limbs were tingling with numbness. He was standing like normal, there wasn't any pressure on his limbs. His blood flow was fine. He could even feel air scraping in and out of his chest.

He just couldn't breathe.

He was sure, then, that the oxygen was going somewhere else when he sucked it in, because it didn't feel like it was getting to his lungs. His trembling got worse when he noticed, his breaths coming faster as fear and anxiety crawled up his throat. Oxygen wasn't getting to his lungs. He was gasping for air, and it was going into his chest, but none of it was entering where it was supposed to. He grasped desperately at the edge of a desk, his sight blurring. His entire body felt like it was going numb now, that unpleasant tingling sensation spreading absolutely everywhere, even his neck and scalp. He couldn't escape it, and that just made everything worse.

God, he couldn't breathe.

No, it wasn't just breathing that was the problem. He was numb, and his chest felt painful, his muscles aching. He must have been hexed, too. He was dying, too. That was the only explanation, because everything he was feeling was simply too much. It felt like he was dying, and he couldn't do a single thing to stop it. Feeling weak, his knees gave out, and he slowly curled up on the floor. He brought his knees up to his chest like that could help him somehow, and his fingers dug into his hair. A sharp pain was abruptly splitting his skull, and it took him a moment to realize why—he was crying too hard and breathing too fast. He pressed his forehead to his knees and tried his best to stop whatever was happening to him. He didn't notice—couldn't notice—when the door to the classroom opened. He didn't and couldn't notice anything until someone was kneeling in front of him and the voice was too close to ignore.